Just started a new project

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I picked up an alder Tele body and vintage style tele neck from ebay. Now to source parts, pickups etc.

I saw someone on the telecaster forums who's avatar is Kokopelli playing a telecaster I figured I can use that as an inlay on my new Tele.



Kokopelli will be an inlay made of cocobolo and I have some ivory scavenged from old piano keys that will make the guitar for Kokopelli to play.



FYI If you're looking for a great way to model your guitar before you build it, try this website www.nymphusa.com/tele/
Click on the KISEKAE Virtual Guitar Modeling System link

[GuitarAttack Forum]

Chris -- Very cool guitar, and we can't wait to see it.

By the way -- the guitar visualization tool at your link is incredible. It would be complete if you could just order the guitar once you finished manipulating it!

Thanks,
John

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Parts have started arriving. Got the body and neck.
BTW, Eden doesn't include a nut so I decided to create my own.

We recently got a Lab/Golden Retriever puppy, and he's been working on a Bison femur for a while. I decided to liberate about 2" from the end of it. Cranked up the old band saw and cut through.

One thing I can say for certain is that bandsaw + bison femur = pee-yew!!

I'll post pics once I've got the new website up.

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New updates.
I've created a website to show my progress...

www.ckcustomguitars.ca/my-saga-saga/index.html
Click on Telecaster to see the project thus far.

I'm still waiting for the hardware to arrive.

[GuitarAttack Forum]

Chris -- Thanks for the update. Let us know how the Eden parts work out. I've seen them all over eBay for a while, and the prices seem almost too good to be true.

Thanks,
John

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A couple of things I've noticed at first glance.
1. The headstock isn't exactly a Tele style, though it is close and non-tele owners may never notice the difference.



Note the heel of the headstock protrudes lower than the neck in this shot. Most tele headstock's I've seen are even with the back of the neck.

The neck and body joint isn't as nice as I've seen with the SAGA kits so once I've got my bridge and tuners I'll fit the neck and see how much adjustment the neck pocket requires.



In this picture you can see how the corners of the neck hit the body causing gaps at the foot of the neck, also the pocket is ever so slightly wider than the neck. I've got plenty of veneer so that I can make shims to tighten the fit once I've determined the proper neck alignment.

[GuitarAttack Forum]

Chris -- Looking forward to see how it sounds. I like a well-formed neck pocket, but you may not need to shim. The majority of the contact is on the bottom of the neck, and the unsightly gap will be covered by the pickguard.

As with all builds, I recommend getting the guitar together and playing prior to finishing. It will save big headaches.

My two cents.
John

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I'm with you all the way on that.
The gap around the neck is really not that much, and if I overspray into the neck pocket a bit, that should just about tighten it up.

I've watched enough of American Chopper to realize the importance of assembling first and testing it out before applying a finish.

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I got an email from a visitor here named David,
David Wrote:

I came across your site from guitar attack and I had a quick question.

I was wondering about your experience with the Eden neck and body. It sounded like they met your requirements for quality and were at least comparable to the Saga kit. Have you had any problems with them? How are the frets on the neck? Also, I've seen a couple of different people selling Eden stuff. I'm wondering which of them you bought from. Thanks in advance for your help.

I built one of of the saga tele's and I'm planning a 2nd project. I've been looking at the Eden stuff. But, I've been afraid that it is really poor or variable in quality.

- David

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I figured I'd post my reply to him here as it might be interesting to others as well.

The quality is pretty decent for the price you pay.
I’m very pleased with the overall fit of the neck to body, and the neck is straight. the frets have been filed already. The body is really nice as well, it’s 2 piece alder and has a pleasing grain which will look good in the burst finish I’m planning. The best part is that, other than the string through holes and the pickup routs, there are no predrilled holes in the body. This means I can get the scratch plate where I like it and drill my own holes without having to refill any!

On the neck, the tuner holes are pre-drilled to 10mm so if you want to install vintage tuners you’ll need to get a set of adapter bushings from Stewmac. (ask me how I know this.  )

I purchased a Wilkinson compensated bridge and when I align the string through holes with the ones in the body, the bridge pickup route is a little bit off, however it’s no worse than the screw misalignment on the Saga tele’s and I figure that I can adapt the string through holes to make up for that alignment and it will all be hidden under the bridge anyway. Since the bridge alignment may be an issue, I now have to await the arrival of my pickups before I can drill holes for its mounting screws.

What you see on my website is about as far as I’ve gotten to date.
I have to budget my parts purchases and as I get more parts I realize that I’ll need other bits before I can go further, (adapter bushings and pickups for instance).

The saga kits make it a bit easier as all the parts are there at the beginning.
What I’ve learned about building a parts-caster is that gathering parts from all over means I’ll
likely be working with fitment issues as I go along. But that’s cool since I feel like I’m really building something
a bit more complicated this time.

My plan is to take my time and do it right the first time.

Thanks for writing.

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I got the adapter bushings from StewMac and was all set to assemble the neck when I found that the tuners required a slightly wider hole spacing that what was provided on the EDEN neck. There was simply no way they were all going to go onto the headstock at the same time!

What to do...?

I packed everything up and waited for inspiration.

I finally decided that I could carefully file each tuner mount into submission. The end result is that all is well in tele-land!

[GuitarAttack Forum]

Great recovery, Chris!

I really hate that feeling when you get those new parts and nothing seems to fit.

Thanks for keeping us up to date on your progress.

John

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Well I've made great progress with my Tele project.

Once my pickups and other electronics arrived I was finally ready to do the pre-assembly.

There were a couple of alignment issues with the bridge pickup, bridge and string through holes. I already knew I'd have some fun with those parts. I'm also glad I took John's advice and didn't re-contour the neck pocket as I needed to be able to move the neck in order to align the strings properly.

Once I got it all together I played a bit to see if any other problems might crop up. Everything seemed to be pretty good.

So I took it all apart, put the neck into a protective package and packed up all the hardware and started to work on the body. Since the body was completely unfinished I had a much easier job of applying the finish than was the case with my SAGA Les Paul. Not having any spray equipment I decided to go with a wipe on finish, and also decided against attempting a burst. The body was stained with minwax black walnut stain, then I applied 14 or so coats of clear polyurethane hand applied with a rag. I smoothed the surface with 0000 steel whool between every other coat. This took about 4 days to complete.

This is where I'd gotten to by 10:00 a.m. Christmas Eve.



I've already gone over the entire surface with 000 steel whool, then with Mequiars Polishing compound, followed by Mequiars swirl remover, then with a rich coat of pure carnuba wax.

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From this point it was pretty much normal assembly.

The path for the wires from the neck pickup to the control cavity is a 3/16" hole from the neck to the bridge pickup route, then from there is a 1/4" hole into the control cavity, not the way Fender does it, but it appears to work OK, other than the pickup wires are a bit short for that run, and don't leave a lot of wiggle room.

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At any rate by 2:00 I was almost finished and quickly dashed out to the music store to get a scratch guard and a set of Ernie Ball Slinkies.



For the keen of eye, you might notice that I used the custom tele wiring modification that was posted here www.guitarattack.com/repair/telewiring/telewire.htm

I added anther wiring mod to that diagram as well.

The wire that goes from the tone pot to the outside lug on the volume pot gets moved to the center lug on the volume pot. This reduces the treble loss when you roll the volume back. (It's similar to the blend mod that we do on the Les Paul to allow the volume controls to operate independently when both pickups are selected).